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City Council to look at ways to keep people from peeking at your ballots
By adamg on Wed, 11/18/2009 - 1:17pm
The Boston City Council agreed today to look at ways of making it harder for the nosy to see how you're voting.
Councilor John Tobin (West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain), said the current system, in which people vote at little triangular platforms that look like they belong in a bank, makes it too easy for people standing at the same cluster to see how somebody's voted. And then there's the walk to the scanner box, which offers further opportunity to figure out a person's ballot, he said.
Tobin said some cities use a system in which voters sit at a table and a privacy curtain surrounds them.
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Comments
Last time I voted, the cop
Last time I voted, the cop at the machine would take the ballots out of the privacy thing so he could insert it.
You know whats even better than privacy booths? Electronic voting (with printed records) !
optical scan IS electronic voting
with a built-in paper record that can be hand-counted if necessary. Can't get much better than that.
No, no, no on electronic voting!
I like the basic idea behind Boston's system - it's electronic (scanning and all that), but there's still a true paper record (your actual ballot). There have just been too many problems with the touchscreen method (zap! oops!) for me to trust them (I know, who am I to distrust all knowing Diebold?).
The problem isn't that it's electronic
The problem is that it's closed source CRAP from Diebold in nearly all of the places that it has ever been implemented.
A) There's no reason for the software to be closed source. Open it up and let everyone try to break it or improve it. Most "hacking" these days come out of exploits that the WHITE hats have found first and told the manufacturer about...but that don't get patched fast enough or people don't update. OR they're system-based hacks...use a slimmed down Linux host and that won't even matter.
B) There's no need for it to be touchscreen. I have no idea why they think that's the best way to interface for voting.
C) I don't see the need for a paper record, especially one that the voter is going to have to manipulate directly (butterflys, hanging chads, incomplete circles filled in, stray pen marks...etc). BUT if a paper record were to be needed, why not a printed receipt from the electronic machine. You can have it drop into an internal secured bin should it ever be needed. It would be easier to tally and completely foolproof against voter screwups as mentioned.
and also that it's electronic
It's actually a really wicked problem (not in the Boston sense). Yes, of course you can and should open the source - but how are you, the voter, supposed to know if the machine you're using is actually running the latest, hopefully exploit-free version of that source (and of the entire toolchain)? And remember - we're just now finding exploits that have been in DNS and kernel code for a decade.
The big advantage of a paper record is that the VOTER can verify that his/her vote was recorded correctly - and if not, that it will show up in a manual recount. How do you manually recount a transaction log, other than "Yep, the software still gives the same results"?
It's not important that the voter be able to directly manipulate the paper. Some proposals have a mechanical system. where your vote would be printed out and visible to you through a lucite window; once you verify your selection, the printout goes to that internal secured bin.
There are also cryptographic solutions, where you get a receipt that you can later use to verify that your vote was recorded - yet in a way that doesn't directly reveal who you voted for (so your vote can't be coerced or bribed). They're clever, but so far they're all too confusing for any non-comp-sci voter to really understand.
It's that coercion that makes it hard. You need anonymity (I can't see who you voted for), voter verifiability (you can check that your vote was recorded), and auditability (the public can check that the votes were all recorded). They're in tension.
Hands off
The check-out police officer isn't supposed to touch the ballots. He or she is there to tick off your name on the voter list. If necessary, officers can give instructions on inserting the ballots -- a lot of people have problems doing that.
Huh, John?
I like and respect John, but I wonder whether he actually votes in Boston. I'm a clerk at a polling place and don't see the problem.
We already have those annoying paper sleeves that we tuck ballots into for each voter. They carry the ballot in its sheath to the voting station. Those who are concerned about privacy (I'm not; just ask how I voted) can easily cover their choices with their body, hands or the sleeve as they mark.
When they go to the checkout station, the officer doesn't see their ballots unless they pull them out and wave them in front of him. Many voters try to feed the whole mess, sleeve, ballot and all, into the slot. That doesn't work. If they want privacy though, they just pull the ballot an inch or two beyond the sleeve and the rollers in the slot grab the ballot before anyone could see its contents.
Nearly all voters though pull out the whole ballot and push it in. They do not share Councilor Tobin's concern.
Privacy
I too dislike the lack of privacy in the tiny triangular counter areas. And, like J above, I have voted on at least one occasion when the police officer at the exit desk, rather than instructing me on how to feed my ballot from the sleeve into the scanner, took the whole thing from me, removed my ballot, and fed it in for me.
Shame on massmerrier, a Boston voting clerk
massmerrier, you have casually written a profoundly disturbing post.
You question, if only tongue-in-cheek, whether a Boston city counselor bothers to vote in his own election. You express annoyance at the means by which the election department has chosen to ensure privacy ("annoying paper sheath," "feed the whole mess"). You deny that a secret ballot is important to you, to your precinct, or to the electoral process at large.
Then you go on to express ignorance of the fact that the ballot on at least one occasion has been entirely too long to be covered by thy sheath.
You are a clerk and you don't see the problem. The problem that the ballot cannot possibly fit onto the triangular desk provided. The problem that the triangular desk wobbles unpredictably when one, two, or three people are using it. The problem that the instructions provided to voters are not sufficient so that the majority of them, as you tell us, are ignorant of how to feed the ballot into the machine.
That you do not understand the value of the secret ballot and that the frustrated voters of your precinct are unable to easily cast a secret ballot are not reasons to peremptorily decide that a secret ballot isn't worth your trouble.
Shame.
Shame?
Wow, good drama there, JP.
My point about Tobin's motion is that upon reading it, I was surprised that it ignores the physical realities of the voting stations and the use of the sleeves. Apparently to make his own points, he presents an odd vision. I suspect if he gets the public hearing he requests that the Council will find this is not a problem.
I have dealt with thousands of voters over numerous elections. I can state firmly that when offered a choice instead of being handed the sleeve, nearly all voters don't want to be bothered with privacy wrapper. Yet, it is supposed to be offered and we are taught to hand them the package instead of a ballot. We end up shuttling back and forth all day to keep enough sleeves handy for the ballots for voters checking in. Each one gets the sleeve unless the voter strongly refuses to take it. Quite a few immediately put the ballot on top and use the sleeve as a tray.
It is true that the voting table quarter does not take the whole ballot, particularly when it is sheathed. Yet I find that by turning to the side of your writing arm, you can easily conceal the ballot from any and all while smearing the ovals. Also the high and wide partitions would require a voyeur vote observer to be very obvious in poking a head and neck around. We poll workers don't see that or hear of it happening.
Those of us, including me, who are old enough to have taken civics classes learned a strong respect for the concept of the Austrian ballot. Yet, I don't see your attitude that others look at or even would consider looking at the ballots of fellow voters.
Moreover, we have numerous voters who have problems marking or need translation. We always have two poll workers help, as a safeguard against anyone influencing the voter's choices or marking the ballot instead of the voter. Invariably those voters too are unconcerned that we workers could be aware of their choices. They have come to do their duty. That is important to them.
In fact, it's not uncommon for voters to ask us whom to vote for. We never give opinions and are forbidden from discussing any candidates or ballot questions inside the polling place.
There surely is a small percentage of voters who are convinced that someone is dying to know how they'll mark a ballot. I can tell you we don't experience complaints about that. Instead, we hear that having to use the privacy sleeve is an unnecessary burden.
All of that said, I too miss the theater of voting behind the curtain. I liked flipping the levels (which also keeps you from overvoting [a very common problem with smear-the-oval ballots]). I loved the finality of pulling the handle with the opening of the curtain. I understand it was slow, expensive, prone to mechanical failure, and left no record, but it was voting as I grew up with it and I miss it.
Flip off
Yeah, the handles are good but I found they unnecessarily made it more difficult to vote for a write-in candidate. From what I remember, I was required to hand-write the person's name on a sticker then place it into the tiny hole on the board next to one of the handles, then pull the heavy lever.
Much easier to hand-write
my namethe candidate's name on a piece of paper.news hound
More dumbass legislation from the king of worthless and needless legislation.....John "I practice to sound like a kennedy" Tobin. This guy will do anything to stay in the news....
Three voters at one table? Boston's doing it wrong then
In Somerville, each voter goes to a separate little wooden station with his/her ballot. It's not ideal but it's a lot better than what is described here for Boston.
It's partitioned
As a Boston voter, I don't consider this a problem that's calling for a legislative solution. I do think, however, that Council should mandate better-looking cops at the polling places.
What Fenwayguy said
Imagine three tiny little triangular platforms, barely large enough for a ballot (or maybe too small to actually lay one flat on it, I can't remember), each with shortish screens on either side, around a central axis.
Illustration
Leave it to the ubiquitous Mr Garfield to document the matter. In the background are the voter ballot stations. I'd call the privacy screens tallish, -- certainly higher than most anyone's eyes -- adequate to the task and relatively easy to store and transport.
Here they are again, visible behind the folks who volunteered to inspect each ballot prior to inserting it into the scanner. (Kidding! Heh!)
In times of trouble
The only time poll workers end up inspecting a voter's ballot is when an Auto-Scan machine repeatedly rejects it. Nearly every time, we find that the voter goofed up and the machine's logic ID'ed the trouble. That most common is not the infamous stray mark. Rather, a voter marks too many candidates (as in six instead of four City Councilor ones or both candidates for Mayor in the recent general).
In those cases, the inspector, clerk or warden will diagnose the problem, show it to the voter, void the ballot and give the voter a new one. They get three tries at voting and can mess up two ballots. That can happen a dozen or more times a day per polling place. These problems do require a poll worker to see the ballot to figure out the problem.
Otherwise, the poll workers don't care who votes for whom. We're not supposed to see the ballots or feed them into the machine for the voters.